A Muslim preacher argued that the Koran backs Jewish claims to Jerusalem at a Jerusalem Day celebration in London this week.

Rome-based Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi told an audience at Edgware Synagogue that he found it “intolerable” that “no one questions the rights of Catholics to St Peter’s, or of Muslims to Mecca, but so many question the rights of Jews to Jerusalem”.

Interpreting a passage from the Koran, he said that “even if Jews were expelled from the city and scattered all over the world, the time will come when they will be running to the city, coming from every different place”.

Sheikh Palazzi was speaking at the launch of a film about Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, which has been produced by the Springboard Education Trust.

In it, he says that there is “no reason for Muslims to deny the state of Israel — which is a Jewish state — complete sovereignty of Jerusalem”.

Chief Rabbi-elect Ephraim Mirvis also spoke at the event, which was jointly organised by Springboard and the Zionist Federation. Rabbi Mirvis described Jerusalem as “the beating heart of the Jewish nation”.